


i can make you laugh, i can make you cry

by Anonymous



Category: Video Blogging RPF
Genre: Angst, DSMP, Falling Apart, M/M, Multi, Oh wait, Sapnap has abandonment issues, Time Travelling Karl Jacobs, anon bcause not proud, corrupted! sapnap kinda, egg vines arc, if u know my writing style shut up, karlnapity is minor ship here, main: karlnap, rlly this is just. sapnap crying and shit and karl being unsure, they r fiancés :)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-18
Updated: 2021-02-18
Packaged: 2021-03-12 13:53:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,534
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29510670
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: Sapnap gives a bitter, resentful laugh, one that sounds pained but still music to his ears, still the same pitch, the one that sends his heart throbbing and his heart yearning dangerously again. Fans at the dying embers of a love too worn, too strained, tested until its breaking point.“You don’t want me around either.”(Karl, Sapnap and Quackity fall apart like a kick at a fragile tower of children’s building blocks.)
Relationships: Alexis | Quackity/Karl Jacobs/Sapnap, Karl Jacobs/Sapnap
Comments: 9
Kudos: 143
Collections: Anonymous





	i can make you laugh, i can make you cry

When Karl pushes open the door, he pants from the exertion, the way his lungs strain and falter for breath from the run from his little library. 

He doubles over at the door, hand resting on the doorknob, heaving and sucking in air heavily. Time travel takes the shit out of his stamina, but he’d promised himself that he’d not make his fiancés more worried than they always were after he wanders in after a disorientating time travel episode. 

Karl raises his head. Sapnap stares back at the table.

Karl gives him an unsure, wavy smile. “Hey.”

Sapnap ignores it. Karl fights the guilt that intertwines and wraps his heart, poisonous vines that threaten to squeeze his heart till it burst.

“Quackity’s gone.” Sapnap says. Karl blinks, stalls when he gives a small sound of “what?”. Sapnap does not look at him.

Sapnap instead casts his gaze towards the twin rings on a necklace strung and tied tight around his neck. His fingers dip and play with the rings, and gold sometimes catches the dying golden setting sunlight from a window. His bandana is gone from the usual spot around his head. 

“He left.”

“Why?” Karl squeezes out. He’s numb.

Sapnap shrugs. His fingers go in, out, in, out, swivel, touch, flick.

“Didn’t like it here enough, I guess.” 

There’s tension strung, high, taut. It’s mutual when they both feel the air swell and pulse between them, a barrier. None of them want to be the first to snap the atmosphere with a carefully positioned pair of scissors. 

“Where’s your bandana?”

“I put it away.” Sapnap says, point-blank. His voice is drained of its usual flurry of emotions. It’s quieter than Karl wants it to be. 

“You never take it off. Like, ever.”

Sapnap’s mouth twitches at the corner. Karl can’t read into it. 

“Everything has their firsts.” 

“Really?”

Sapnap shrugs again. “I guess. I don’t know.”

There’s a scraping of a single chair in the living room, suddenly way less homely, way less warm than it was, bigger and darker than he’d left it. Maybe it’s the absence of white noise from Quackity’s small mutters when he drones in Spanish, or the way Sapnap absolutely refuses to look at him. Or maybe it’s the way he feels like he’s sinned when he draws on himself and tracks Sapnap as he walks back into his room. 

There’s a flash of red and black when Sapnap rounds the corner and pushes his door open, the clean click of a lock, and silence.

The silence is deafening. He feels like running.

\--

The next day, Sapnap’s at the table again when he stumbles blearily into the living room, clutches at his hoodie where its colour seems to have changed. (He doesn’t think it should be a dark rose pink over this one spot.)

His fingers are at it again. Fidget, hook, lift, drop, swirl. His face is tilted down. He doesn’t acknowledge Karl’s appearance.

“Sapnap?” Karl mumbles out, voice raw after sleep.

Sapnap _mhm_ s at the question. It’s all the greeting he’ll get. 

Karl slides hesitantly into the chair opposite of the other. No matter how desperately he wants Sapnap to respond, he doesn’t, just bows his head more so that his dark bangs are curtains closed from his point of view.

There’s nothing. Only Sapnap’s strange little tune strung in the recesses of his chest, notes unknown and of a frequency unstable. 

Slide, flick, push, loop, caress. 

He doesn’t ask _where did you go_ . He doesn’t yell _why don’t you tell me, tell us--_ . He doesn’t whisper and cave inwards with _you don’t trust me_ . He doesn’t murmur _I hate you_. 

He says nothing at all.

“I bet you don’t know that I visited Dream.” Sapnap says, finally.

Karl jolts. “No, I don’t.”

“I went last week. You weren’t here. I didn’t think it’d be a big deal to tell that to you, y’know, considering you’re busy with your stuff. Didn’t want to bother you or anything like that.” Disdain, weaved throughout his small voice. 

“You wouldn’t have.”

“I would.” Sapnap says, a little harder, stronger, bitter. 

“Since it bothers me that you go off somewhere and come back drained and mouth zipped about what happened, I make the very valid assumption that it would to you. So I didn't.” 

“I don’t mean to do this stuff, you know.” Karl whispers, tries to mend the widening void between them, heavy and threatening to suck them both in.

“Yeah? Okay, okay,” Sapnap breathes, a steady simmering, trying to keep from boiling over. “Okay. Let’s say I should trust you again, again. And then you go somewhere again.”

Karl falters. “I really don’t mean it.”

Sapnap looks up, suddenly fixates his gaze onto Karl, piercing. It’s bitter when he says “Then tell me about it”. They both know the answer.

“No,” Karl says.

The intense gaze breaks like a dam and Sapnap turns away, bittersweet, emotions rolling off in waves, and Karl’s reminded achingly that they’d been perfect puzzle pieces, once. They’d just fit, once. Not anymore. 

“Then take it back.” Sapnap’s hand clutches firmly at the top of the chair, white at the knuckles, and his other hand rips at the necklace around his neck, glinting gold as it clinks and clatters in Sapnap’s rough grasp. It’s wrenched up and over his head, and Karl feels helpless, helpless, helpless. 

Sapnap looks back. His dark bangs frame a pretty, pretty face burdened by everything and everyone, blank now except for the silent, shuddering tears that spill over and drip down his face. His gaze is angry and hurt and done with all that’s happened. The necklace with the two perfect halos of their rings fly from Sap’s fingertips and hits Karl hard on the left side of his chest. 

“Take it back. I don’t want it.” 

The chair clatters with an echo when Sapnap stands, strides to the door, wrenches at the doorknob. 

Sapnap flees, and Karl sits, stunned. 

\--

Sapnap’s back at the table, now. He hasn’t left. Yet. He bets that it’ll be awhile before he leaves for good. 

“You’re back.”

Sapnap ignores him. It’s weary, tired when he slumps forwards and buries his head into his crossed arms. 

Karl walks over, but he hesitates, sees the way Sapnap flinches when he draws near, steps a reasonable distance away. 

“I’m sorry.” Karl tries.

“No.”

“Sorry.”

“Shut the fuck up.” 

Karl barely restrains his guilt from prying another _sorry_ from his cracked lips, barely keeps himself together when he feels words and feelings and all the complicated stuff bubbling low. 

There’s red lines across the back of his hand. 

The panic dormant in his chest rears, and he surges forward, desperately ignores Sapnap’s hisses as he grabs at his right hand, pulls it panickedly closer. 

Red webs its way across the smooth expanse of his hand, vines, digging into the skin, staying there.

“No,” he says.

Sapnap says nothing at all.

“You’re not corrupted yet, right? You’re not, right? I can still save you, right?” Karl grits his teeth and pushes the words through his teeth. He feels Sapnap’s gaze on him.

“No, ‘m not.” Karl nearly collapses with relief. “But please don’t pull it out.”

“Huh?” Karl says.

Sapnap regards him with narrowed eyes. “I said, don’t take it out.”

Panic flares out and envelopes him. “It’ll corrupt you, Sapnap!”

“I don’t _care_.” Sapnap spits, and the tone and ferocity at which it was hissed says that it’s true. “I don’t fucking care, Jacobs, and fucking let go of me.”

“I--” Karl swallows as Sapnap rips his hand out of his grip. 

“The only reason,” Sapnap begins, scalding water, too hot, too intense, “that I’m still here is because I don’t have anywhere to go, Karl Jacobs. No one wants me around. I’m not here for _you_.”

Karl _keens_ , and it’s sharp white and stabbing when his heart feels like it’s been cut open. 

“Oh.”

Sapnap gives a bitter, resentful laugh, one that sounds pained but still music to his ears, still the same pitch, the one that sends his heart throbbing and his heart yearning dangerously again. Fans at the dying embers of a love too worn, too strained, tested until its breaking point. 

“You don’t want me around either, do you, Karl? Dream doesn’t. Bad doesn’t. George doesn’t. Quackity doesn’t. Always something to be disposed of, to be left behind.” Sapnap spits out, out of breath. 

“Leave like you _want_ to, Karl Jacobs; I know you do. I know you do. Why don’t you fucking _leave_?” The end comes out with a sob.

“Because I don’t want to leave.” Karl chokes.

“But you keep leaving.”

“Not by choice.”

“Then tell me, goddamn it! Stop fucking pushing me into the dark! Just fucking stop!” He drives his hands into his hair, but Karl still thinks he looks beautiful. 

“I will if I can.” Karl says strongly.

“You’re lying. You always lie.”

“I don’t like to lie, Sapnap.”

“ _Bullshit_.”

“I love you.” 

Sapnap laughs, one last time, and he’s so self-destructively beautiful that it hurts him.

“Bullshit.”

Then they fall apart, finally, finally, and he thinks about how it’d lasted longer than he’d expected it to.

**Author's Note:**

> lol !  
> ps. i wrote this in one sitting


End file.
